Monthly Archives: December 2011

I hope I didn’t offend anyone by typing Xmas instead of Christmas. That wasn’t my intent. In fact, I get a good chuckle when other people puff up and get offended and demand that we keep CHRIST in CHRISTmas. The ironic thing is that by saying Xmas, they are keeping Christ in Christmas. The New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. For all you non-rocket scientists, that means Christ was spelled and spoken differently than it is in English. It was very common to, instead of writing out the entire word ‘Christ’, abbreviate the name by just using the first letter. In Greek, the first letter in Christ is Chi. What does a capital letter Chi look like?

Just like a fancy X.

It’s okay to say Xmas, even out of ignorance. But for those of you who are adamant that it’s not, that’s okay too. Language is just a tool we use to worship, it’s not the object of our worship. Speaking of…

It’s also that time of the year where society reduces Jesus to an infant. This is acceptable and pleasing to them because an infant is harmless, an infant is easy to control. Even the church can get swept up into this dangerous thinking. Yes, Jesus was an infant. But not anymore. I guess it’s comforting to some to see our savior as a baby in nativity scenes. I wonder how many of them would still be comforted to know his pending judgement on the entire world? Very few, I would imagine.

Christmas seems like a weird time to be reminded of how powerful Christ is. There is no greater humility than God becoming one of us. But in that humility, ending by death on the cross, Christ was exalted above all names and everything is under his feet. Nothing can escape him.

In the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis wrote about Christ’s power as Lucy is being introduced to the Christ figure, a lion named Aslan.

Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.